-simon rosenberg. we are grateful that you came out here today. if we had done an event around polli,ng we would have a few more people, but we are lucky to have joining rob shapiro, the chair of our globalization initiative, our good friend edward luce, who is now the former bureau chief of "the financial times," now chief american commentator and is also a published author. he has recently written one of the more influential or at least highly commentated -- there was so much commentary around his book about whether or not america was in decline in the economic issues we will be talking about today and we feel lucky he took time out of his busy schedule to guide us. many of you know rob shapiro, who has a long history of policy leadership here in washington, starting in the early days working for daniel patrick moynihan, to helping advise bill clinton in 1992, and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce in the second clinton term. what brought us together is the subject we will talk about today. back in early-2005, when ndn was reborn